A Filmmaker's Guide to 'Malcolm X' (1992)

It is very well-known that Malcolm X (1992) may be one of the greatest biopics ever made and it is even more well-known that it is possibly Denzel Washington's greatest performance of his career. Personally, I am so obsessed with this film, I just keep watching it over and over again. Every single time a new detail comes to me and every single time I love the film more and more. We all know that shit gets real as soon as Sam Cooke's song "A Change is Gonna Come" hits the movie whilst the car scene is in play.

Depictions of power politics are rife in this film with different types of power hidden all over the place. There are many that have extreme amounts of technique to them and others that are thoroughly simplistic. What we're going to do today is look at three different types of power that come depicted within the film, how they're depicted and what they mean. It's very interesting to look at this because obviously, Malcolm X is a symbol of great power and just pure greatness. Depicting an icon of this level must have been a daunting undertaking initially for director Spike Lee. The writer of the screenplay Cotton Comes to Harlem also cowrote the film and that is one absolutely necessary thing to remember.

Most of the film features a black cast, black directors and producers and the soundtrack is mostly black and so - it comes as the perfect film for depicting the life of one of the most important people in recent history. The man who produced the soundtrack (Terence Blanchard) won the Soul Train award for the movie and again, is part of the same demographic as most people on the project. I honestly believe that if Malcolm X himself were to see this film, he would be very impressed at it indeed. It is one of those films that just represents great, great amounts of power and depicts it in the most incredible and visually stunning ways. Based on the book The Autobiography of Malcolm X it is an amazing achievement of cinematic brilliance.

We're going to look at power politics in this film and there are five or six ways this is presented - we're going to attend to three of the main ones. Here they are:

• The rising power of black people in the USA
• The presentation of the power of Malcolm X as a person and figurehead
• The presentation of the power of regular citizens in the USA

Let's get on with our analysis then:

Section 1: The rising power of black people in the USA

The rising power of black people in the USA is a huge theme in the film and is rightly done by various methods of cinematography and filmmaking methods. The reason for this is to make certain aspects of black people and their rising power stand out and its done so well that upon first watching the film, I bet you don't actually see it happening. But you can feel it happening, I bet.

Let's take a look then at this still:

The way in which this still is filmed is pretty clever. The camera, slightly beneath the characters, tilted ever so slightly upwards so that it makes the characters and the space in which they exist look bigger, wider, deeper and larger. The colours show us a happy and vibrant lifestyle in comparison to the greyscale seen when the world of the white people is viewed. This is all part and parcel to making black people seem on the rise to power. Everything about them is depict as more and greater than, this is just the beginning of the power politics represented by the filmmaking, but is something of a great feature of it.

This particular still is not only showing us the brighter, happier and more vibrant world of black people in America and isn't only showing us their rising power, it is also showing us the way in which they have very regular behaviours in comparison to white people. They like to have fun, they like to dance, they work - they are very normal human beings and so, the rising power is a part of that in which they try to prove that they are not only the same as, but are more than. And they are totally correct in their depiction of it.

Section 2: The presentation of the power of Malcolm X as a person and figurehead

The presentation of Malcolm X as a figurehead is sort of the whole point of the movie. Presenting his rising power and then his maintenance of power is part of the catalyst that moves the plot-line along to his death and afterwards. In the movie, we see several instances that suggest the rising and maintaining power of Malcolm X and how this has meaning not only in the black community, but how it seems to frighten the white community as well. This is power on both sides; one side is with him and the other side is afraid of him. It is two different spheres of power.

Check out this still and see what you can gather about the power of Malcolm X as a person and a figurehead:

The way in which we see him presented as a figurehead here definitely matters. We have the various microphones which represent the fact that many people of many official types want to hear him speak. We have the faint view of the large audience which represents the amount of people he has on his side. Then, we have the camera, yet again just beneath the centre of the frame, tilted ever so slightly upwards to make our character look more grand and larger than life.

If you want to look at this in more detail and really see how it is done, then proceed to check out the death scene and ask the question of how this presents Malcolm X as a figurehead in terms of power politics:

We don't really need a huge analysis on what this kind of power means since the power of Malcolm X as a figurehead is the thing that pushes the storyline along and is pretty much the premise for the entire film. One thing we can say though is that every little thing in the scene contributes to the way in which the audience experiences this through the lens of 1960s America. It is not actually something of our own time, we need to be thinking, living and we need to be in the atmosphere of the 60s in order to think and respond to this correctly in the way the filmmaker wants. This is why the movie itself proves to be entirely timeless.

Section 3: The presentation of the power of regular citizens in the USA

The presentation of the power of regular citizens isn't really a study of scenery or stills but instead, is a study of atmosphere and style. It is presented in the way in which normal people are made to look grand or powerful through the use of dialogue and/or filmmaking. There are many reasons to do this, especially where Malcolm X's surrounding social circles are concerned. The first reason would be to present certain people as more powerful than others even though both of them are just regular people and aren't a part of the film equated with Malcolm X. The next reason would be to present certain people as catalysing the plot along. Let's take for example, the death scene. Within the death scene we have a man holding a gun who is presented as powerful even though the scene itself is so quick. The way in which we see this is through 1) style. His clothes are darker than everyone else's. 2) Movement. His movements are a lot quicker than everyone else's. 3) Attitude, facial expression and body language. His body language is far more rigid than everyone else's. Just watch it one more time and try to write down some of your own theories as well since we haven't actually covered them all.

Answer these:

• What makes this man stand out amongst the entire group of people even though he isn't as important as the main character?
• How is he viewed as being 'different'?
• What is the reason for this and is it effective enough for an audience to recognise what is happening before it happens?

Conclusion:

Thanks for following along with this brief analysis of the power politics in Malcolm X (1992). I hope you've at least learnt a thing or two about power representation and how it works in a film so blatantly about power. The way in which to succeed at this depiction is to really establish who is powerful and how this hierarchy works before you begin making or scripting the film. Thanks for reading and good luck on your next project!